phpBB or Vbulletin?

[Redsfaithful]

I know there are some people here who can give me some information. I'm in the planning stages of a community centered site and I'm wondering what opinions are when it comes to phpBB vs. Vbulletin.

I don't mind paying an ownership license for Vbulletin, but I want to know if it's really worth it. I've read that phpBB is less secure, is that true? I wouldn't have a problem updating fairly often if that would help security wise.

So I know it's a broad question, but any opinions/knowledge would be helpful.

[KronoRed]

Also there is http://www.simplemachines.org/ it's free and the alternate RZ runs off it

[TRF]

I had a running arguement about this. IMO phpBB2 is as secure as vBulletin, but it depends on how much you want to add hacks and 3rd party mods. personally i don't mind doing that. Then there is the support issue. If you want to yell at someone when it doesn't work go with vBulletin. Nobody to yell at with an open source product.

For me, I don't want to pay for anything I can get for free. And I have a decent sized budget. We are switching to a Content Management System called phpWebsite. We bought 4 servers and paid around $12,000 for them. The CMS's started at $50,000.

phpWebsite is free. We've hacked it quite a bit, almost to the point that it is nearly not the same product we started with.

So really it depends on how much you like to work with it. If that is not a lot, go with vBulletin.

[Reds4Life]

vBulletin all the way, it's a superior commercial grade product, unlike phpBB which is unsupported open source. It would literally take you countless hours of hacking to bring a default phpBB up to the level of default vB, you can't even merge threads together with default phpBB.

I've used Invision PowerBoard, vBulletin and phpBB at various times for forums that can have 1,500+ people on at any given time, vBulletin is the superior product. PM me if you need more info.

[LoganBuck]

I use runboard.com for my site. It has been really easy and my members don't have too many issues.

[Unassisted]

phpBB has been subject to numerous hacks and worm cracks in the last year, but it is free. The development team has released fixes, but only after hundreds and hundreds of boards have been compromised. Those security issues have led RedsZone's host to ban phpBB from their servers.

vBulletin is very popular, resource intensive, on the expensive side and you're soaking in it.

I prefer Invision Power Board, myself.

If you want to "try before you install" http://www.opensourcecms.com/ has demos of several OS packages installed with open passwords for the back end. Over there, you can flip switches and kick the tires of these forums.

miniBB
Phorum
phpBB
phptb
PunBB
SMF
UNB
W-Agora
XMB

[ochre]

I have just admined SMF (formerly known as YABB) for a little bit now on the redszone alternate site for long threads (RASLT). So far I like it quite well. Not sure how well it scales to higher loads, but it appears to be gaining in popularity.

[ochre]

SMF also can be bridged to a "foreign" user database (particularly Mambo). That might be a consideration for you as you don't want people to be logging into two disparate systems. I am sure that others have similar functionality, I just know about this one .